Korean Phrases with “Suddenly”
Saturday, December 13th, 2008Hi everyone. Hyunwoo here. I’ve made a video to introduce some common phrases using the word “갑자기” (gapjagi), meaning “suddenly”. I hope this will be of some help! If you can’t watch the video here, click on the direct link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc4AKgJWfpw
Thank you!
Posted by Hyunwoo in KClass Videos, Learning Korean |
December 16th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Great video, 현우, and like anything good, it’s motivated me to ask you a question:
In the last example, you translated “갑자기 커피가 좋아졌어요” as “I suddenly liked to start drinking coffee.” If you hadn’t translated it, I would have thought it was something like “The coffee has gotten better all of a sudden,” as if the coffee just got better with age. Is it more or less correct to say something like “갑자기 커피를 좋아하기 시작했어요”?
December 16th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Daniel
Thanks!
And yes, it is POSSIBLE to translate “갑자기 커피가 좋아졌어요” to “the coffee has gotten better all of a sudden”, but native speakers wouldn’t translate it that way 99% of the time, because it’s pretty obvious from the context actually ^^ but yeah, what you pointed out is interesting
좋다 can have two meanings, as you know.
“to be good” and “to like” (but the meaning of “to like” is more indirect as you know)
Here, 좋다 is closer to “me gusta” in Spanish.
And of course, 갑자기 커피를 좋아하기 시작했어요 is perfectly fine, but 갑자기 커피가 좋아졌어요 is just more commonly used in everyday conversations
I hope this answers your question ^^_ thanks!
December 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Ah, interesting, and the link to the Spanish actually helps clear things up and put it in context.
I remember in the introduction to the video homework about winter and summer, you asked the question “Do you like winter? Or do you like summer?” You didn’t say “겨울을 좋아하세요? 여름을 좋아하세요?” Rather, you phrased it thusly: “겨울이 좋으세요? 여름이 좋으세요?”
I remember thinking that to be a bit unusual, but it’s just one of those things that’s perfectly natural to a native speaker, but odd to someone trying to learn the language…
December 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Ooh, I just thought of something else… I think the difference between the two meanings of 좋다 can be illustrated using opposites:
좋다 (to be good) is the opposite of 나쁘다.
좋다 (to like (in an indirect way)) is the opposite of 싫다.
Does that make sense? Does it work?